Grammar Notes Tagalog

Over hundreds of years, Tagalog written form has been maintained and the Tagalog grammar remains unchanged from its original form despite having new words being added. A lot of the words that have been incorporated were derived from Malay, Spanish, and English.

Speakers of the English language will observe that Tagalog vocabulary is very similar to English: 'kompyuter' means computer, 'bolpen' means ballpen, and 'plastik' means plastic. It is important to note that although some words have been derived from English and mean the same thing, other words have totally different meanings. For example, 'yelo' means ice instead of yellow, and 'mama' doesn't only refer to 'mother' but can also mean 'mister'.

The basic level of Tagalog is relatively easy. It is similar to Malay and makes use of suffixes for this language to work. It adds affixes to the base of words and particle markers to illustrate how words relate to each other in a sentence.

In the example above, the noun is 'papel' or 'paper'. In English, we would simply add (s) at the end to change it into its plural form, so we'll come up with 'papers'. In Tagalog, we simply add 'mga' before 'papel', it would then be 'mga papel'.

Tagalog Verbs also have 3 tenses: past, present, and future. However, they follow certain rules that are way different from English. In the Tagalog language, affixes are used.

There are three types of affixes:

1. those added at the beginning of a verb (prefix) – mag-, nag-2. at the middle (infix) – -um, -in3. at the end of the verb (suffix) – -an

Example:

Word: runPast: ran Present: runningFuture: will run

You will notice that in English, the word 'run' is easy to convert to the future tense by simply adding the word 'will'. In Tagalog, you need to insert affixes in between letters and repeat some letters, and even a combination of these rules in order to change them into the past, present, and future tense.

Another example is the word 'sew' or in Tagalog 'tahi'. To form its past tense just add the affix -in right after the first letter 't', that would then be 'tinahi'. But it would not be always that the affix of the word will be added after the first letter of the word, especially with the affix -um it could also be before the first letter of the word.

Example:leave – alisPast: Umalis

Just take note that when using the affix -um, it is added before the first letter of the word if it is a vowel and added after the first letter of the word if it is a consonant.

Examples:Akyat (climb) – umakyatTayo (stand-up) – tumayo

Present Tense

To form the Present tense of the word you just have to remember the following rules:

1. Using the affix -um and repeating the first vowel of the root word.

Nasa means 'in' when translated to English. The preposition banda means 'around' which indicates time and location. The prepositions ng, ni and sa means 'of'. This serves as objective markers for nouns or phrases, aside from serving as markers for names of persons.

sino (who) saan (where) – inquires about the location wherein an action was performednasaan (where) – inquires about the location of an object and not used with verbspaano (how) nino – either means who, whose, or whom kanino (whom or whose)nakanino (with whom)magkano (how much)kumusta (how are you)kailan (when)ilan (how many)gaano (how) – although it means how, it is used to ask about the quality of an adverb or an adjectivebakit (why)ano (what)alin (which)

WHAT

Question word 'ano' or 'what'.

Example:Ano ang ginagawa ng babae?What is the woman doing?

You will notice that in the above example, Tagalog questions are constructed in the same way as English questions. When translated to Tagalog, the be-verb is omitted.

WHERE

'Where' questions in Tagalog are normally constructed the same way in English.

Example:Where is the man?Saan ang lalaki?

Where is the baby?Saan ang sanggol?

Where – saan The – ang Baby – bata

The only difference is that the be-verb (is) is missing in the sentence when it is translated to Tagalog. This is how it works, in Tagalog, the be-verb is omitted.

It is very important to learn how to count in Tagalog, as much as it is important in any other language.

Tagalog is a mixture of Tagalog and Spanish. Having two sets of numbers, the Tagalog language incorporates Spanish. Tagalog is used for counting numbers while Spanish is used for counting numbers, and money or currency.